Short Hops: A glimpse into early penal life

René Bruemmer, The Gazette07.09.2013

The Old Prison of Trois-Rivières, opened by the British in 1822, was the longest continuously run jail in Canada. It was in operation until 1986.Gilles Rioux

A tour of the Old Prison of Trois-Rivières might include being locked into a cell, as these people were, while hearing about the conditions prisoners endured through the decades.Old Prison of Trois-Rivières

There was a place for the difficult inmates at the Trois-Rivières prison. They called it The Cave, and with its metre-thick stone walls and sandy floor, it felt like one. They put down sand so that prisoners who moved too much would stir up a choking cloud of dust. Worst of all, it was kept pitch black and prisoners were fed at irregular hours to further disorient them. At the end of one or two weeks underground, the prisoners would emerge, hacking, eyes stinging in the light, discombobulated and broken. They generally behaved after that.

This was among the elements of early Canadian penal life and rehabilitative theory gleaned from a recent guided tour of the Old Prison of Trois-Rivières, which was opened by the British in 1822 and remained in operation until 1986, making it the longest continuously run jail in Canada. Our guide was a knowledgeable and enthusiastic storyteller who used to work in a transition home for prisoners. His experience lent the tour an empathetic tone. Next door and connected to the prison, the Musée Québécois de culture populaire offers a related exhibit, Quebec, Criminally Speaking, that traces some of the most famous, and disturbing, cases of the 20th century.

Just as a bakery might feature a carved loaf of bread to denote its vocation, the Trois-Rivières prison bears the symbol of a cord over the main doors, for it was a place where inmates could be hanged. Seven prisoners were executed there for the crime of murder. Although public executions, once promoted as a moral deterrent and widely attended, were outlawed in the early 1900s, our guide once had a tour member who saw the last hanging at the prison in 1934. His father was wealthy and could afford to pay the $5 that neighbouring homeowners charged gawkers to watch from the roofs of their houses.

Although it could be cruel, the prison represented an evolution in rehabilitative therapy that stressed public humiliation, like being locked in stocks outdoors where people would fling horse droppings, or public floggings with a whip known as “cat of nine tails” laced with metal studs.

The prison was meant to provide prisoners with adequate living conditions, with heat and ventilation and segregated spaces according to age, sex and the nature of the crime. Unfortunately, children as young as 12 could be sent there, and with as many as 100 inmates crowded into a facility designed for 40 and only 12 guards and no lights at night, “teenage boys would come in as delinquents and emerge as full-blown sociopaths,” our guide noted.

Repeat offenders were put on a bread and water diet and forced into hard labour, with the result they would often die of malnutrition and disease. Often unclaimed by large families incapable of paying their funeral costs, their corpses would be sold to medical schools.

Walls one metre thick meant modern plumbing could not be installed, so prisoners used buckets well into the 20th century. Some froze to death as late as the 1980s because the heating system was spotty, and the alpha males hogged the warmer spots.

In 1986, it was finally closed.

Next door, in the museum, some of the province’s most transformative criminal cases of the 20th century are presented. Among them is the horrific case of 11-year-old Aurore, abused to death by her affluent Roman-Catholic parents in 1920 even though townspeople knew it was happening. Crime, once considered the purview of immigrants and the impoverished, became seen as an egalitarian curse, and the attorney general’s office would soon be inundated with reports of similar abuse.

Horrific in another way is the murder case of Albert Guay, who wanted to kill his wife. He planted a bomb on her plane to do so, killing all 23 people aboard in 1949. Police traced the crime to him because she was the only one on board with a life insurance policy.

Other dark moments in Quebec’s criminal history include the FLQ crisis and the murders of the Solar Temple cult in Morin Heights in the 1990s.

IF YOU GO

It’s a 90-minute drive from Montreal to Trois-Rivières. The prison and museum make a good stopover visit on the way to Quebec City. Admission to the museum or prison alone is $12 for adults and $7 for children 5 to 17. For admission to both, it’s $19 for adults and $10.50 for children, or $47 for a family of four. The tour, which takes just over an hour, is not recommended for children under 12. English tours are available from June 24 to Labour Day at 11 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. Groups of 15 to 39 people can arrange to spend the night in prison. Call 1-819-372-0406 or visit www.enprison.com for more information, or the museum website at www.culturepop.qc.ca.

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